The NGO Economy

I thought I was done with the blog for the week until I read this at The .Plan:

I asked Sammy about his greatest challenge in his new SMS content platform business. His two word answer? The "NGO economy."

Sammy noted what should have been intuitive to me after so many trips to Africa, that Africans are naturally entrepreneurial -- many have been making something from nothing all their lives, just to stay alive. But what Sammy said next rocked my world.

"Africans don't see a reward system in place for being entrepreneurial. In fact, they view it as a matter of survival, not an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. Rather, what they learn at a very early age, is that in order to make good money, they should learn to speak English incredibly well and then maybe, just maybe, they can get a job driving for an NGO. In a few years, if they play their cards right, they might be able to land an NGO job as a project manager and even advance further."

Sammy's point was simply this. As a struggling businessman creating new start-ups, he could not compete with what NGO's were paying for some of the best and brightest. And even worse, he said, "by the time the NGO's are done with them, there isn't an ounce of entrepreneur left."
--R. Todd Johnson, Friends of Ethiopia, on a downside of paying above-market wages. HT: Chris Blattman